UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

PSALM 16-20

SUGGESTED PATTERN Read Psalm 16-20 with your spouse or household  then re-read Psalm 19:1-14 again with spouse or household, then spend 2 mins in silence focussing on  Psalm 19: 1-6 asking the Lord, the question “What does this text mean?” then 2 mins in silence asking the Lord what He is saying to you personally through Psalm 19: 1-6  and then share together with your spouse or household what the Lord has been saying. Finally one person reads out loud the devotional below and then pray for one another.  

PSALM 19: 1-6. ¹ The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. ² Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. ³ They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.⁴ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.⁵ It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.⁶ It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.

In C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, in the first book in the series, The Magician’s Nephew,  there is a story of the how Narnia was created “In the vast, formless void of this new world, (there is) a mystic song. From the darkness, a lion emerges, his voice resounding through the emptiness. This is Aslan, the great lion and the embodiment of good and creativity. Aslan’s beautiful song starts painting brushstrokes of creation, bringing light, landscapes, and creatures to life.” (1)  CS Lewis is clearly inspired by the biblical narrative with Aslan “a type” of Jesus the Living Word.  However, it might be a surprise to us that the Orthodox church sees “the word” in Psalm 19, as Jesus. According to the Orthodox study bible, (2) “ creation bore witness to the glory of God revealed in Jesus’ incarnation (verses 1 to 5) and in his birth from the womb of the virgin, He was likened to the Sun rising from the east, to a bridegroom coming from his chamber, and to a strong man ready to run a race to bring salvation to the world (verses 6-15).  Is this a bit of a stretch to interpret scripture this way?

When the apostle John used the word “logos”, in John 1:1 and 1 John1, he was using a word that had profound meaning. When John was writing his Gospel, Greek philosophy had a strong influence on the world, in which he was writing. A fundamental concept for Heraclitus, an early Greek philosopher, was this concept of logos which he coined to mean, a universal law that unites the cosmos. (3)When John used the word “logos” in John 1:1. “In the beginning was the Word” he was saying “Jesus is the spoken word that created everything” but more than that… “Jesus is the reason why everything exists.” This developed the church fathers reading of the Old Testament and the Psalms.   

For the early church we know from the story of Cleopas in Luke, that the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus was a huge paradigm shift.  Rowan Williams says (4) It took 100 years to come to terms with the truth that the Messiah of the Old Testament came as a man and suffered and died a horrifying death.

There had been two puzzles in the prevailing classical Greek understanding of the world that were solved in the coming of Jesus, “The first puzzle was the relationship between what the Greeks called the intelligible and the sensible what we call the spiritual and the material. The other great unsolved puzzle arose from the relationship between what the ancients called virtue and fortune. So that human life even at its bravest and most heroic is finally a losing battle against the irresistible power of fate or fortune.” (5)   Through the coming of Jesus, the divine logos, the puzzle was solved, the material and spiritual were one in Christ and a perfectly virtuous God become man and conquered fate….” (6) the puzzle was solved.

(7)“The early church fathers began to see that the gospels portrayed Jesus using the psalms to explain his identity, his message and above all his passion and Christians began to read the Psalter as the book of Christ in another way, not only as an objective account that fulfilled prophecy but also as spiritual revelation of his soul, in fact as a virtual transcript of his inner life while accomplishing the work of redemption. Paul particularly taught Christians to read the Psalms as echoes of the voice of Christ.”

Prayer

Lord Jesus… the picture of a champion rejoicing to run a race to bring salvation to the world to bring the Gospel to the world, here in psalm 19, resonates with Hebrews12:2. Help me to run the race you have marked out for me, to fix my eyes on you Lord Jesus, the author and perfector of my faith… may your Gospel go out to the ends of the earth, I pray. Show me the part I can play. 

References

(1) https://www.blinkist.com/en/books/the-magicians-nephew-en  Lewis, C.S. Magician’s Nephew.

(2) Orthodox Study Bible, 693.

(3) https://www.davidpawson.org/resources/series/unlocking-the-new-testament-1 Gospel of John.

(4) Williams. R, The wound of knowledge.

(5) Newbiggin. L, Faith in a changing world, 39.

(6) Newbiggin. L, Faith in a changing world, 40.

(7) Cameron. M, Christ meets me everywhere, 167-8, quoted in Carter, C.A. “ Interpreting Scripture and the Great Tradition.”